Review: Mortal Kombat X

Throughout my lifetime I’ve played many fighting games. I’ve played Bloody Roar, Street Fighter, Killer Instinct, Clay Fighter, Tekken and etc. You get the picture. Fighting games have always been one of my favourite genres of video games to play. Mortal Kombat was my favourite fighting game series, hell Mortal Kombat is one of my favourite game series period. I have spent birthday parties having Mortal Kombat tournaments in which the winner moves on. I also played my dad many times. I’ve beat him so badly at times he’d get so mad cuss and throw his controller. In any case I love Mortal Kombat and I don’t know why. Maybe the reason is because it’s easy to pick up and actually get good at it or maybe it’s the crazy amount of violence, but this series has always held a special place in my life.

On April 14th 2015 Mortal Kombat X was released to the masses. The first thing I did was go to the practice mode to practice fatalities. You will notice right away these fatalities are the most violent they’ve ever been. With the power of next gen, NetherRealm Studios really pushed the envelope with the fatalities. The attention to detail really shows and makes each fatality special. Visually the game is amazing. Some of the fatalities even made me cringe when I first saw them. Some of them still do. I thought I was desensitized. Nope I was wrong. Eyes pop out of skulls, organs go flying out of bodies. You can even see parts of the brain during some of them. They did extremely well making each fatality with detail. They brought back the long asked brutality to the game and stage fatalities are now called stage brutality. Fighters and backgrounds are as detailed as they have always been. One fighter even has another fighter that rides on his back. If you’ve played Mortal Kombat (2011) or Injustice: Gods Among Us, the fighting will feel like an old glove. The fighting is more fluid than it’s ever been. You can now interact with each background in different ways. In one map, I threw a floating body at the person I was going against. Each of the 29 fighters have 3 different fighting styles in which you are able to do different special moves and flashy combos set specifically for that fighting style. Special moves are easier to pull off now and some of the moves remain the same button combination as the last version IE Scorpion’ spear. Combos are at the same difficulty as previous versions. You can easily get a hang of them with practice within the practice mode. There is a variety of modes to keep you busy such as Story mode, Traditional Towers, Test your might, Living Towers, Single Fights, 2 VS 2,Online and the obvious Two Player Battles.

Living towers is a new addition to the game. It’s very similar to the challenge towers in Mortal Kombat (2011) but you climb up the tower with a set challenge. There are 3 different towers you can choose from. They are Quick towers, which is just a small traditional tower, however with some kind of extra condition. My first one had lightning falling from the sky that lasts for about an hour. Daily tower that lasts for 24 hours with 8 different challenges. Finally, the Premier tower which is updated weekly and has 16 different challenges and special events that you must complete to get special bonuses.

Another new addition to Mortal Kombat X is faction wars. When you first play the game you get to choose a faction. The Factions are Lin Kuei, White Lotus, Brotherhood Of Shadow, Black Dragon And Special Forces. At the end of each week the winning faction gets extra bonuses and coins to be used in the returning Krypt. The Krypt has more quick time events than it did in the past. The first time it happened it actually made me jump, as it was very unexpected. Online has the same modes as Mortal Kombat (2011). To note, all the popular modes return such as King Of The Hill.

Story mode is my favourite mode to play. With a cast of old and new fighters. Without spoiling too much of the story, it revolves around an amulet that is holding the former Elder God Shinnok trapped inside. The story is set 20 years after the events in Mortal Kombat (2011). The cinematic heavy story mode actually gives you a reason to care about each of the characters that it’s focused on. It develops and tells the story of the new characters really well. First The story will make you laugh, cringe and go holy #$@!. The story runs a short 5 hours long. One disappointment for me personally was the final boss was much easier than Shao Kaun from Mortal Kombat (2011). At a time I threw my controller because they made Shao Kaun so frustrating and cheap it was almost insane. It took me about 4 hours to defeat him. I beat the Mortal Kombat X boss my first time. Final Bosses in the most cases should give you a true challenge and they should make you frustrated. A game should not got out on a whimper.
The true value comes from playing online. Fighting games are meant to be with an actual person, they are not meant to be played against the computer. You can get a great feeling of joy destroying someone online then to finish the fight pull off a gruesome fatality. It truly feels awesome doing that to an actual person instead of the computer. King of the Hill duplicates the same type of thing you would do at an arcade or at a friend’s house. Winner moves on to face the next person. With all of the stuff to unlock in the Krypt , the amount of time you could spend in practice mode perfecting combos of different fighters and the promise of DLC fighters and story DLC you could be playing this game for months. This is the Best Mortal Kombat ever released.

This review is based on the Xbox One version of Mortal Kombat X. Mortal Kombat X is also available on Android, iOS, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and Xbox 360.